


Through a Glass Darkly

by idella



Category: Hancock (2008)
Genre: F/M, Immortality, M/M, Post-Canon, Romance, Threesome, Threesome - F/M/M, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-19
Updated: 2008-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-08 04:29:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idella/pseuds/idella
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When they get too close, when the way they were made forces them apart, they find ways to compensate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Through a Glass Darkly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rivkat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rivkat/gifts).



> Written for RivkaT in the Yuletide 2008 Challenge.
> 
> With thanks to frek and sherron0 for reading and commenting; to Megan and Wendy for places to talk about Yuletide; and particularly to evilprodigy and Curtana for all their invaluable advice.

Thursday night when Ray sits down to dinner, there's an extra place setting at the table. He catches Mary's eye as she comes from the kitchen carrying the spaghetti and meatballs, and she shoots him her "I-don't-know-but-it-can't-be-good" look.

"What's this, buddy?" he says to his son, pointing to the extra plate.

"In case Hancock wants some spaghetti madness," Aaron says matter-of-factly.

Ray looks at Mary. She's looking away, her lips pursed.

"Hancock lives in New York now," Ray says.

"But he can fly," Aaron says earnestly.

Ray coughs. "Well, you see," he says, "your Mom and Hancock can't be in the same room together without things going—badly."

"Did you have a fight?" Aaron asks, looking at his mom, who's winding spaghetti onto her fork and doesn't answer. Ray looks at the huge sheet of plastic that's covering the hole in the front of their house. Not a fight, exactly.

"It's kind of a superhero thing, okay?" he says to Aaron.

When Ray turns the subject to Aaron's class's new pet iguana, Mary gets up and puts the extra plate away.

::

The phone rings just after Aaron goes to bed reluctantly, still talking of bumper cars and candy apples and Hancock. Mary picks it up and hears nothing but static. "Hello?" More static. "It's for you," she says, handing the phone to Ray.

"Hancock!" Ray says. He leans against the counter - settling in, Mary thinks. Ray sounds excited, like he's talking to a friend he hasn't heard from in months. Mary looks at her watch. It's barely two hours since Hancock called when they were at the carnival. It's getting easier to talk to Ray again, and she'd been telling him about the old days - the old old days - when Hancock interrupted.

She should go, let them talk in private. She hovers by the counter, eavesdropping, instead.

"No, no, I liked it..." Ray is saying. "The moon...that should get people's attention." He and Hancock chat, and Mary tries to figure out from Ray's side of the conversation what Hancock's up to these days. He's been introduced to bagels and lox, been the guest-of-honor at a neighborhood party; he's having a great time, by the sound of it. Fitting in.

All of a sudden, Mary doesn't want to hear any more. She leaves the kitchen, squeezing Ray's elbow on her way by. "I'll see you later," she whispers, and Ray nods absently.

::

The TV in the kitchen is tuned to CNN, and Mary's half-watching the news as she swabs at the scrapes on Aaron's knees with a cotton ball drenched in hydrogen peroxide. "Hold still," she says.

"Hancock!" Aaron says. He stops wriggling and starts trying to snuffle back his tears.

Mary looks at the screen. Hancock's standing in front of a pile of rubble and there's dust all over his pleather costume. No animals were harmed in the making of this superhero, Mary thinks. He looks vaguely pissed off.

The woman doing the voice-over is talking about how Hancock had kept a building that was on the brink of collapse upright for the forty-five minutes it had taken to evacuate everyone inside.

"Do you think maybe Hancock could come back and throw Michel up in the sky again?" Aaron says. Mary reads between the lines: Will you do that, mom?

"Not a chance," she says, holding out the box of Band-Aids so Aaron can pick which cartoon design he wants.

She pulls up a stool and they watch the rest of the news segment together. The effort it's taking Hancock to stay put and answer the reporter's questions is obvious to Mary. Ray's still trying, bless him, but he can only quash so much of Hancock's personality. Mary sees his hands clench and unclench at his sides and it reminds her of Brooklyn, right before they had to move to Miami.

Of course she called him something else then, but she's known him for so long, under so many different names, that it's easy to adapt to his newest one. This is what it's like for them, so it shouldn't bother her so much that Hancock never has any trouble calling her Mary, but it does.

::

"Aaron's okay?" Ray mumbles near her ear. Mary nods, and feels Ray's nose bump against the side of her face. They're watching a dumb movie on cable, but Ray is ignoring the TV in favor of putting his mouth all over her neck. Mary approves. She sinks deeper into the sofa cushions and shifts closer to Ray.

A shot of the New York City skyline comes onscreen. Mary straightens herself, dislocating Ray. He glances at the TV. "I heard from Hancock today," he says.

Mary never hears from Hancock. Phone lines fuzz up when she tries to call, computer circuits burn out when she e-mails. She could get his snail mail address from Ray, but what would she write? Hey, remember me? No, of course not. Forget it.

Ray is telling her about Hancock's rescue. She finds it irritating. "I can do all that, too," she says. She regrets it the second it comes out of her mouth; she sounds churlish.

"But you don't," Ray points out.

Mary shrugs. "I wanted to live a mortal life without the usual mortal end," she says.

"Yeah, Hancock shows up and you both die? How does that work, anyway?"

It doesn't. Or else it works too well. She doesn't know yet. "It's complicated," she says.

She ignores Ray's unasked question about what she's going to do with her abilities, now that she's admitted she has them. Just because she's been outed, it doesn't mean her life is up for discussion. She grabs the remote and changes the channel.

::

Hancock's kicking back on his new patio outside his new penthouse apartment, drinking a beer - just one - when Mary flies in. He scrambles to his feet, knocking over the bottle. "Hey," he says.

Mary pulls her hair off her face and says hello.

"You want a beer?"

She shakes her head.

"Yeah, probably not a good idea, drinking and flying and all that. I'm trying to cut back, too."

Mary strolls over to him, stands so close he can smell her hair. It smells like the California sunshine, he thinks. He doesn't say it out loud. It would sound dopey. She's his best friend's wife. There are a lot of reasons why it would be a bad idea to say something dopey.

Mary's wearing glasses with dark shades and he can't see her eyes. She traces her finger along the scar on his neck, and he swallows. "You, uh, gonna tell me how I got that one?" he asks. "Colonel Mustard in the library with a lead pipe and all that?"

"I don't think we have time for that," Mary says. Her hand is cupping the back of his neck now, raising goose bumps on his arms. Behind them, Hancock's patio door shatters. They jump apart. Mary looks at her watch. "One minute, fifty-eight seconds," she says. "Next time I'll bring Aaron - he wants to see you."

Later, when Hancock is pulling shards of glass out of his buttock with his fingers, he wonders if they'll leave a mark. John Hancock and Mary Embrey, he thinks. 2008. Manhattan.

::

When Mary comes to pick Aaron up, he and Hancock are sitting at Hancock's kitchen table, drawing with pencil crayons. She looks around Hancock's shiny kitchen, so much solider than his flimsy trailer in the desert.

Hancock sees her checking out his place and says: "Ray thought I should live among the people, get to know my neighbors, shit like that."

He grins at her, and Mary is so disarmed she forgets to tell him off for swearing in front of Aaron. Her eyes drift from his face to his limber body - with a physique like that he looks like he'd be limber, he always was before - damn. Thoughts like this are what cause property damage around here. She pulls her eyes away from him, forces herself to focus on something else. His fridge and stove look brand new. "How are you paying for this?" she asks, worried.

"Ray and I are working on that," Hancock says. "We're gonna write a book." He sounds self-conscious but also pleased. "Ray tell you?"

"He's excited about it," Mary says. "He's got his notes all laid out just so, you know."

Hancock makes squaring-off motions with his hands. Just like that, Mary thinks. She checks her watch. "C'mon, buddy, time to go," she says to Aaron.

"Don't forget your picture," Hancock says. "Here, I'll give it to you mom to hold on to."

"Hancock did the people and I did everything else," says Aaron, putting the pencil crayons back in their cardboard sleeve.

Mary looks at the slightly crumpled piece of paper in her hand. She and Ray and Hancock and Aaron are sitting at a table. There's a food fight in progress, spaghetti and meatballs everywhere. In the picture Mary's wearing an outfit like the one Hancock wears when he fights crime, only there's a mask on her face. "So no one knows who you are," Hancock says, touching her face in the picture.

"Is that so?" Mary says.

::

Mary hears Ray stumbling around in the kitchen, and on the stairs, and then he's at the doorway of their bedroom, leaning against the doorframe, tie loose, shirt-sleeves pushed up. She wants to muss his hair, run her fingers over the stubble on his jaw, drag him to bed by his tie. "You didn't drive home like this?" she says instead.

He shakes his head and smiles at her. Mary feels her whole body relaxing at the sight of him. "C'mere," she says.

He takes off running and leaps on the bed. She reaches for him, pulls him onto her lap so he's straddling her. "You okay?" she says when he sways. He nods and reaches out to steady himself on her.

"Hancock gave me a lift," Ray says. He leans in and kisses her jaw. She can smell gin on his breath. "Hancock," he mumbles into her skin. He kisses her again, harder this time. Mary lets herself moan in response. She shifts her legs, trying to open them wider. "Hannnn-cock," Ray croons. He giggles. Mary pulls him closer to her, until his body is right up against her own. She feels Ray's erection against her belly. "Hancock," he says again, and he's holding on to both sides of her face, fingers caught in her hair, trying to wrench her mouth right off her face with his lips.

Mary's kissing Ray right back, thinking about the times she was watching Hancock and he didn't notice because he was checking out Ray's ass. Her imagination takes it further: Hancock turns his head and notices her surveillance, and instead of being shamed into stopping, he's egged on. Hancock's watching Ray, who's turned away, oblivious. Hancock's eyes are hooded, one hand is disappearing inside his pants, and Mary's coming in long, shuddering waves.

::

Hancock makes a hard landing in the desert just because he can: there's no one around to complain about the debris he kicks into the air when he sets down.

It's a clear day with nothing but rocks and dust and dirt as far as his eye can see. Not even a cactus in sight, though when Mary shows up, a few minutes after he does, she's looking plenty prickly. She stands with her arms crossed, like she's ready for a fight.

"We here again, eh," Hancock says. No response. "Ray said you wanted to see me," he continues, arms relaxed at his sides, non-confrontational, like Ray's always going on about. How Hancock should act when he's around the good guys.

"Thanks for bringing Ray home last night," Mary bites off.

"No problemo," says Hancock. What the hell is this, he thinks.

Mary scuffs the toe of her boot in the dirt. "How's the book coming?" she asks. She sounds a little calmer, but Hancock notices the sky starting to fill up with heavy-looking grey clouds. It's making him nervous.

"You did not drag me all the way out here in the middle of goddamn nowhere to talk about the goddamn book," he says.

"How's the book?" she says again, colder this time.

"Fine," he snaps. He thinks about Ray's enthusiasm for the project and relents a little: "Ray thinks it's going to really take off, what with the All Heart success and all."

"Well, why not?" Mary says sarcastically. "All of America loves you. They'd do anything for you."

"Well, maybe I love America," Hancock shoots back. "Maybe I don't mind doing shit for America."

"I've never asked you to do anything for me," Mary says quickly. The wind is starting to pick up now and it whips her hair around her face.

"No, you just look at me like why can't I remember, and I can't remember, I can't, and you sure as hell don't seem interested in telling me!"

"It doesn't matter," Mary says loudly. A sharp, slicing rain starts to fall from the dark sky.

Hancock gets up in her face, so close he can see the pores of her skin. "What does matter to you, huh? 'Cos all I see is you sittin' on yo' lazy superhero ass doing nothing. I could use some help out here saving the world."

"You want to know what matters to me?" Mary yells back. "Keeping my son and my husband safe. And you know what? I've seen what humanity does to itself over and over and over again. Ray's success is laudable, but it's a blip, an aberration—"

She looks so upset that Hancock reaches out instinctively. Just as his fingertips graze her arm, there's a huge roar, like the rumble of an earthquake, only magnified. They both jump back and watch as the ground splits open between them.

There's a good ten-foot gap separating them now, no choice about that, and when Hancock looks into the chasm, he can't see any bottom. He backs away from the edge.

"I want to protect your family, too," he says. "You guys are all I've got in this world. But there's two of us now. I got your back, you got my back, capisce?" He holds out his hands to cut Mary off. "I know what you're gonna to say, about pairing up. I don't want to be your sidekick, neither. This is a big country, Mary. Two coasts. What do you say? I take everything east of the Mississippi, you take everything west. Deal?"

Mary waves him off. She looks pretty fine even when she's angry, he thinks, watching her stand there with her hair blowing in this wind they've created. She turns and walks away, hands on her hips, then walks back to stare into the rent in the earth "I didn't come here to get into an argument with you. I wanted to say—you and Ray. You have my blessing."

Aw, shit. Shit shit shit shit. Shit. "I don't know what you're talking about," he lies.

"I've seen the way you look at him," Mary says.

"At who?" he says, desperate to buy time.

Mary blows air out through her lips. "Fine," she says. She turns her back on Hancock and pushes her heels against the ground like she's ready to take off.

Wait. "Wait!" he calls. She turns back, smirking.

"This is some fucked up shit, Mary, and I ain't even talking about America."

Mary stands there, inscrutable.

"I mean—what about you and Ray? I don't want to break up the band or anything."

"Ray and I are fine," Mary says. Her face softens like Hancock's seen it do before when she talks about Ray. It's stopped raining, he notices dimly.

"Does he even—"

"I think so," says Mary. She smiles, but she looks sad, too, so Hancock waggles his eyebrows at her and her smile busts out for real and lights up the whole damn desert.

He remembers what Mary said about how the two of them are always being drawn to each other, and standing here he feels the pull. No matter what she says, he barely knows her, and most of what he does know - all the parts that aren't her sharp beauty, or her quick wit, or her love for her family - makes him want to avoid her, but right now all he wants to do is to jump across the chasm to be closer to her.

He turns away and takes off instead. He does a couple extra turns around the Earth on his way back to New York, just for the hell of it, and after he lands he marvels that he didn't accidentally break orbit and zoom into space. He's got a lot of extra energy all of a sudden.

::

Mary is sitting on Ray's crammed-full suitcase, and like magic, he can now zip the side shut. This comes in handy, he thinks. They went through a rough patch after Ray found out she'd been lying to him about who she was and who else she was married to, but Ray prides himself on his acceptance of his wife's abilities. He figures you can't help who you are or what you can do. Not doing anything with who you are is harder for him to wrap his head around, but Mary is a good wife and a good mother and a good person, and Ray has a good feel for good subjects to avoid.

Mary's still sitting on his suitcase, and Ray leans over and kisses her on the mouth. She makes a little noise when he tries to move away to ease the crick in his neck, so he pulls her to her feet and kisses her again, making it last. He won't be seeing her - or Aaron - often over the next month.

"Did you talk to Hancock today?" asks Mary as she stands his suitcase on end and pulls up the handle.

"Yep," says Ray. "He said the two of you sorted some things out the other day."

"That's right."

"Anything I should know about?" asks Ray. He's poking around on his dresser, looking for his cuff links, and he looks up when she doesn't answer. "Mary?"

"He's a good man," Mary says. She looks very serious.

"He is," Ray agrees. Mary's sitting on the bed and he goes and sits beside her, pulls her into his shoulder. "I can see why you love him."

He feels Mary shake her head at this. "I love you, too," she says. "Come back to me."

"Of course I will," says Ray, absently. He's just spotted his missing cuff links on his bedside table, behind the alarm clock, and he scoops them up and puts them in his pocket. "And of course you do. What's not to love?" He laughs at his own joke. Mary smiles.

She carries his suitcase to the door for him, which reminds him: "Hancock wanted to know if you could pick up the slack for him while we're gone."

Mary tilts her head to the side and looks at him. "He's going to be busy signing autographs?" she says dryly.

"It would be awkward if we're sitting on Oprah's couch or somewhere, and Hancock has to take off because there's an emergency, don't you think?"

"It would certainly add verisimilitude," says Mary, and: "I'll think about it."

::

Ray knows Hancock is publicity-shy, but he's never seen him behave as oddly as he is on this tour to promote their book about how ordinary people can make the world a better place. Actually, he's been doing well with talk-show hosts and crowds - the public loves his rough edges, his devil-may-care attitude - it's when he's out of the public eye and alone with Ray that it becomes obvious that Hancock is cracking under the pressure.

Hancock's quieter, less prone to joking around. He's so scattered, in fact, that Ray's discreet glances become increasingly less discreet. He can linger on Hancock's forearms, on his ass, on the way he fills out that outfit of his, because Hancock isn't looking at him as often as he used to.

Ray feels guilty about this, because he loves his wife and he knows she loves him. Mary loves Hancock, too, and Ray can sort of understand this, especially in the wake of the success of his All Heart project. Sometimes it seems like everyone in the would is in love with everyone else. He teases Mary about polygamy being so popular it's got its own show on HBO, and tries not to give himself too hard a time about his attraction to Hancock. Fantasies. Not real.

Still, when he sees Hancock in his fake leather pants, slouched in a chair in Ray's hotel room, and has the leisure to stare as much as he wants to - especially at what's nestled between his spread legs - because Hancock's asleep, he wonders what the hell he was thinking when he proposed this tour.

And when he shakes Hancock awake so he can kick him out for snoring so loudly, and Hancock reaches for him, bleary-eyed, and kisses him, a long, sweet kiss in spite of Hancock's stale breath, he knows.

::

Mary rolls the phone cord on the landline in the kitchen between her fingers. Ray sounds tinny and far away, even though he's only in Las Vegas. Sin City is turning out to be a hard sell. "Who knew?" he says, and laughs too hard. He loves the lights and the energy and the excitement. He loves her, wishes she could be there, too. She loves him back. Hancock kissed him.

She goes still when she hears, the phone cord sliding limply between her fingers. "Okay," she says after a moment.

"Okay," say Ray, on the other end of the line. "Okay."

After they both hang up, Mary wanders out to the patio, where she winds up settling in one of the lounge chairs by the pool. She wraps her arms around her knees and watches lights flicker on one by one in the hills beyond their backyard. There is so much light in this century, she thinks.

She hopes this arrangement of hers works. Hancock doesn't remember, but the two of them have done this before. When they get too close, when the way they were made forces them apart, they find ways to compensate.

No matter how many times this happens, it's the differences she remembers. It's so different, Hancock not remembering. Sometimes she thinks it's better this way. Sometimes all she wants is for him to know what they mean to each other - really know. She'd lied when she'd said their past didn't matter. She would take him by the hand and drag him back through time with her, if she could. This, she would point out to him. This, over here. This. This. This.

She shakes her head. The past is the past, and all she can do anything about now is the present. She wasn't surprised to see Hancock fall for Ray, not really. Ray is funny and thoughtful and kind, and he has a natural easiness about him that people respond to. She still smiles every time she recalls the day they met. He'd looked so sad, but she could see how much he wanted to be happy as they stood there in the diaper aisle and he cracked weak jokes about being a clueless father.

They're alike in so many ways, Ray and Hancock. Too many lifetimes to count, her pick of most of the men and women who have ever existed; it figures she'd limit her choices by having a "type".

They're good men, her two husbands, and they make it look so easy. She doesn't know why it's so much harder for her.

She hopes Ray is going to be okay. She knows it threw him for a loop when he found out about her past, and now she's thrown him for another one. She smiles wryly as she thinks about how willing he was to go to Hancock. Social conventions change; the people constrained by them don't. Humans have had the same base desires for millennia, and Ray is very human.

::

"You came back," Hancock says flatly. Ray's outside his hotel room, tapping a bunch of plastic-wrapped roses against his knee. "What made you think I'd want flowers, Ray?"

Ray's spare hand is fiddling with the back of his neck. "They were more for me, actually," Ray says. "So I could, you know, apologize."

"What you got to apologize for," says Hancock. It's not a question. Ray's the one with the real wife, the kid, with everything to lose. You can't lose anything if you start with nothing.

Maybe he dreamed that conversation in the desert with Mary.

"You're right," Ray is saying. He unwraps the flowers and separates their long, thorny stems.

Ray throws the flowers over his shoulder, and Hancock watches as they hit the ground. They look exactly like red roses on a green carpet, Hancock thinks. Ray's always trying to get him to see the world as something it's not, but there's no way to get around it: red roses on a green carpet. "Why'd you do that, Ray?" he says.

Ray looks at a loss. "I don't know," he admits.

"Come in," Hancock says, grabbing Ray by the elbow and pulling him into his room. "You stay out here, people are going to wonder what's wrong with you."

::

"That was a lie, wasn't it?" Ray says. He's lying in Hancock's bed, hands laced behind his head, looking at the ceiling. "The part where you said you hadn't had sex in eighty years."

Hancock makes a non-committal noise from the direction of his suitcase. Ray can hear him rummaging around, looking for something. He props himself up on one elbow to get a better look at Hancock's bare ass. "Because that was not the sexual prowess of a guy who hasn't been laid in eight decades, Hancock."

"Prow-ess?" says Hancock. "I'm a superhero or some shit like that. I ain't no lion. Grrrr," he says sarcastically, turning around to make claw hands at Ray.

"You use that line on all the dudes and ladies?" Ray says, picking at a loose thread on the duvet cover.

"What the hell is this, Ray?" Hancock says. He turns around, showcasing what Ray thinks is some very fine full-frontal nudity. He's embarrassed to be caught looking, though it's stupid that he's shy after what they've just done to each other. With each other. With each other.

"You look dopey lying there with that idiot look on your face," Hancock informs him. He hooks himself onto the bed with one knee and pins Ray underneath him. "This what you what, Ray? You want some attention?"

Ray swallows. "Okay," he says.

"I can't believe you fell for that bullshit," Hancock says. "I lied to you 'cos you looked scared, Ray. Not just scared like you're about to make love to your beautiful wife's other sexy husband," he drawls. "Man, this is some fucked up shit!" he shouts, reaching up and slapping the headboard for emphasis. "Scared like you maybe was out of your element," he says, looking down at Ray with worried eyes.

"So it wasn't good?" Ray asks, but it's only to lighten the mood. He knows it was good. Hancock's a lousy actor. Probably it was the good of release, not the good of skill, but whatever, he thinks. It made them both happy.

"Yeah, it was good," Hancock says. He deepens his voice: "You did good, officer," he says, clapping Ray on the shoulder. The way he's looking at Ray and the way their bodies are pressed against each other makes Ray grab Hancock's hand and keep it on his body. He strains his head off the pillow, but Hancock's already leaning in. "Real good," says Hancock, right before his mouth meets Ray's.

::

Mary's washing a week's worth of wine glasses - she's taken to having a glass of red wine before bed to relax - when she catches sight of the microwave clock. "Shit," she mutters, wiping her hands on the linen tea towel she's been using to dry the glasses. Ray had called last night to say he and Hancock had been bumped ahead on the Today show roster, and they should be on any time now.

Mary curls up on the living room sofa and watches Ray and Hancock gab with the show's hosts. Ray is charming and laid-back and openly courting the hosts and the audience. Hancock is more reserved, speaking only when addressed specific questions, but he seems surprisingly at ease.

This is her life, not a television drama, not even a reality TV show, but she lets herself pretend there's a disconnect between what she's seeing on the screen and what's going on in her life, if just for a moment. "They are so sleeping together," Mary says to the empty room.

She looks at Ray and Hancock and thinks that later they'll go back to their hotel - no, wait, they're in New York, they'll be staying at Hancock's place - and they'll shut out the world. This includes her, but in a way it does not exclude her. Every part of Ray's body that she's touched will be touching Hancock.

She keeps watching after Ray and Hancock's segment ends. They play a clip about gardening with native plants to cut down on water use, and after that, there's a break for local news. Video of police cars, lights flashing and yellow police tape replace the anchorman's bored face. The suspect's mug shot flashes on the screen, an unhappy looking man in need of a haircut. The reporter at the scene calls him a sniper. Mary's finger twitches on the TV remote, but she stays on the channel. There are two schools inside the perimeter. The SWAT team is promising results they're not delivering. She turns the TV off when the reporter starts recycling facts from the top of the report.

She moves through the rest of her morning - finishing off the wine glasses, unloading the dishwasher, folding laundry - thinking "what if Hancock goes?" and "what if Aaron was in there?" and finally, after she calls the school to tell them not to send Aaron home for lunch, "what if I don't?"

::

"What the hell is that thing on her face?" Hancock asks Ray.

Ray peers at the TV at the foot of Hancock's bed. "Uh, I think it was left over from a masquerade party we went to a couple years back," he says. "Mary was a cat burglar."

"She's working for the other side now," Hancock says.

Ray nods, not taking his eyes off the screen. The mask is obscuring her face, but it's definitely her, and not because it couldn't possibly be anyone else who used "super-human abilities to save two wandering school children and bring in a madman". He would know his wife anywhere, and the way her elbows swing up when she's brushing hair off her face is so Mary.

"She's good at that," says Hancock, waving a hand at the screen where Mary is politely evading the reporter's questions, all variations on the theme of "who is this masked woman, anyway?"

Ray stares at his wife and feels an ache in his chest. "Where were you when this was going down?" he teases Hancock, to distract himself.

"Same place we've been all afternoon, Ray. Right here in this damn bed." In his peripheral vision, Ray can see Hancock watching him watching Mary. "You're missing her," Hancock says.

"Yeah," says Ray. "You must miss her, too," he says finally. They've never really talked about Hancock's relationship with Mary, and he wonders if maybe they should start.

"Can't miss what you don't remember," Hancock says lightly. Ray isn't sure he believes him.

He's reaching for Hancock when his cell phone rings. He picks up, in case it's Mary, but it's hard to hear her over the static. He walks the phone to the other side of the apartment, as far away from Hancock as he can get, but by then she's given up and the line's gone dead. Ray pulls on a pair of pants. "That was Mary," he tells Hancock.

Hancock gets up and walks him to the door, where he kisses Ray. It's supposed to be a goodbye kiss but it lengthens and deepens until Hancock's hot hands are grabbing at the cool skin of Ray's waist and Ray has Hancock backed so hard into the door he's surprised it hasn't fallen off its hinges. They're at the door for a reason, he finally remembers. He drags his mouth away from Hancock's. "Mary," Ray gets out. He takes a couple of deep breaths, trying to slow his heart rate down.

Hancock's fingers stay on Ray's skin for a moment before he pulls away. "Be careful out there, " he says.

As the elevator doors close on Ray, he can see Hancock still standing in the hallway, watching him go.

::

Mary's got her mask pushed up on her forehead, her borrowed trench coat's hanging open, and Ray is fucking her up against the brick wall of a dirty New York City alley. Ray slides in and out and she arches into him and groans and Ray pulls his face away from hers like he does so he can hear her better and Mary pulls at his hair, bringing his mouth back. Because it's Ray's hands on her and Ray inside her, but it's Hancock's taste in her mouth and it tastes so good, she'd thought she might have forgotten how he tastes, but she hasn't, and she's coming fast and hard and so sweetly it almost hurts.

Afterwards Mary has her coat cinched around her waist and Ray's folded her paper mask in half and stuffed it in his back pocket - she'll have to buy a new one, maybe something that covers more of her face - and they're walking the streets of New York City after dark, holding hands like two kids on a date.

"Big day today," Ray says when they're stopped at a red light. "We saw you on the news, you made the national."

"Big day," Mary agrees. The light changes and they cross, veering to the side to avoid a huge puddle. The cars going by are making the streets hiss in the wet. "I didn't know if I could do it and come back," Mary says after a few blocks of mostly comfortable silence. "To you, to Aaron. I guess I still don't know." She stops and looks at Ray. "I killed those men who attacked Hancock in the alley in Miami. I chased them down and snapped their necks like they were—like they were dry spaghetti. I wasn't even there when the ambulance came."

"Hey, it's okay," says Ray. He reaches over and tries to dry her tears with his hand, but there's too many of them and his thumb slides over her face, wet and ineffectual. Mary dries her face with the cuff of Ray's old trench coat she's wearing. "I wanted this more," she says, waving her hand at him.

"This—us?" says Ray. Mary nods. A man wearing a bright yellow winter jacket pushes by, muttering about "crazy fucking tourists who stand in the middle of the fucking street in the middle of the fucking night". Mary glares at him as he walks off, still muttering, and feels Ray's hand on her forearm. He guides her under the awning of a store that sells bicycles in the daytime. "What are you going to do?" he says. He's looking away from her, into the darkened storefront.

Mary laughs a bit wildly. "I'm going to go shopping," she says. "This thing" —she plucks at her borrowed coat— "is too bulky to rescue people in." She checks her watch. "Right now I'm getting Aaron from Mrs. Fisk's and going home." She hugs Ray. "Tell him I say 'hi'," she says, after she releases him. She turns to go, but Ray is tugging at her wrist.

"This isn't going to change anything between us, is it, Mary?" he asks, and she doesn't have to ask to know he means Hancock.

"Of course not," she lies. She pulls away. "We can talk about it when you get home, okay?"

::

But Mary never shows any signs of wanting to talk about it, Ray thinks a few weeks after he gets home. And Ray doesn't want to rock the boat, so he doesn't bring it up either, but he has a feeling the time where everything's going to come out in the open is approaching fast. Like, within the next five minutes.

Mary's tearing up lettuce for a salad, not looking at Ray, and Ray's opening and closing what seems like every drawer in the kitchen, looking for the tin foil so he can wrap his home-made garlic bread before he sticks it in the oven.

"The drawer beside the cutlery," Mary says, still not looking at him.

Ray opens a drawer. "I don't see it," he says.

Mary dumps the lettuce on the counter, stalks across the kitchen, opens a different drawer, passes the tin foil to Ray, slams the drawer shut and retreats back to her salad.

Ray can't help it. "That drawer is technically on the other side of the sink than the cutlery," he says.

"Yes, well, you called me at one-thirty to say your lunch date was "technically" over at one."

"So?" Ray snaps. He's starting to lose his temper.

"So it's five o'clock," says Mary. She's got her hands on her hips, and she's glaring at him.

"So I had Hancock drop me back at the office so I could take care of some paperwork."

Mary shakes her head in what looks like disgust and goes back to ripping apart lettuce. He should probably let it go so they can talk about this when they're calmer. He doesn't. "What the hell is this, Mary? Can I just remind you this was your idea?"

"It wasn't much of an original one, considering how you two have been dancing around each other since the day you met. I'm fine with this, Ray."

Ray isn't convinced, but for argument's sake he lets it go. "Then what's going on?" he asks.

Mary jerks her head toward the living room. She sits on the sofa, wiping her wet hands on her jeans. Ray sits in a chair across the room, arms folded, waiting.

"He was mine before he was yours," she finally says, so quietly he almost can't hear her.

Ray unfolds his arms and leans forward. "But you, you can't—oh. Oh." He stands up, walks up and down the living room as he works it out. "So you're not just 'fine' with this. You wanted this." He stops pacing and sits on the sofa next to Mary. "You could have said something," he says.

"I told you to come back to me," Mary says. "It seemed pretty clear."

Ray waves his hand around vaguely. "I thought you meant, you know, after the tour."

Mary shakes her head.

"Okay," Ray says. "Okay."

::

Ray starts pulling what are essentially a series of sexual double-headers, and most of the time that works out okay, but Mary still feels dissatisfied.

She'd thought she'd be getting part of Hancock back through Ray, and she supposes she is, but Ray is a funny kind of filter. Through a glass darkly, she thinks, but without the face-to-face. It's different when you're already a god, and where you are now is the only place you'll ever be.

She knows part of it is jealousy, but she's never been good at dealing with it constructively. The gods are not usually known for being rational, after all. To be a god is to be passionate above all other things. This is why she and Hancock get into so much trouble.

She's been telling Ray stories about her life since he started talking to her again, but she'd been studiously keeping Hancock out of them. This changes.

::

"A matador? Huh," says Hancock, reaching across the table and grabbing a fistful of Ray's fries. They're at a MacDonald's in Bangkok because Ray's never been to Thailand. Hell, neither has Hancock, as far as he can remember. "I wonder if we were ever here," he says.

Ray swallows a bite of Big Mac before answering. "I don't know. I can ask Mary,"

Hancock looks around the crowded restaurant. It's easy to pick out the Western tourists from the Thai locals. He and Mary would have stuck out like sore thumbs here, and if there's one thing he knows about Mary, it's that she likes to keep everything on the down-low. He doesn't even know their real names.

Hancock crumples his soda can with one hand. "She ever tell you what we're called? Our names?" he says shortly.

Ray shakes his head. "She told me that at the time she was talking about—Spain, a few centuries ago—you were the most celebrated bullfighter the people had ever seen. Of course you'd had training earlier, she said, in Crete and Rome." He reaches for his French fries and realizes they're all gone. "Not exactly a level playing field to begin with," he says, upending his empty French fry carton and looking pointedly at Hancock.

"Yeah, yeah," Hancock says, dismissing the carton. "What happened?"

"Apparently you were insufferable—you got to take home the bull's ears too often, you shoved the wrong head up the wrong ass, who knows? You annoy people sometimes, Hancock. But yeah, they drugged you, Mary thinks, and sent you into the ring to battle the fiercest bull they had. By the time she got there you were—you—it wasn't looking good, Hancock. Luckily for you, she dragged your sorry ass out of there."

"So that's maybe why it looks like someone's been playing tic-tac-toe on my stomach," Hancock says.

He imagines Mary's face swimming into focus above him as he lies on hard-packed dirt, a crowd of thousands dead silent all around them. Her face looks soft, even in the bright afternoon light. She'd better not be looking at everyone she rescues like that, he thinks.

Hancock drops Ray back at his car after they check out of their hotel. "So I'll say 'hi' to Aaron for you?" he says, leaning out the car window.

"Yeah, tell him I'll see him soon," Hancock says. He pulls a wrinkled, sweet chili sauce-stained napkin out of his jeans pocket. He'd scribbled a note about how modern parts of Thailand looked while Ray was in the bathroom. "Give this to Mary for me," he says. He smoothes it out and folds it half before he hands it over. He pecks Ray on the mouth. "See you," he says, running his index finger along the brim of Ray's hat.

::

The house is quiet when Ray gets home. Late afternoon sun makes a golden patchwork quilt of the kitchen, where Ray is checking the machine for messages. He listens to a recording of Mary's voice telling him there's a hotel fire in Culver City; she doesn't know what time she'll be back; Aaron is spending the night at Joey's house; she loves him.

Ray is relieved. He has a headache, from the supersonic travel or the exhaust fumes on the highway, he doesn't know which, and all he wants is to have a shower and fall into bed. Alone. He likes to think of himself as an easy-going guy, but sometimes his life is too much for him, and he just wants to be a simpler Ray Embry. Well, back in college he'd crushed on guys while he simultaneously flirted with their girlfriends, so he supposes his love life was never exactly simple.

Still, Ray thinks as he pulls back the covers on his and Mary's bed, sometimes when Hancock's worn him out and Mary's practically got his pants off before he's even through the door, he likes to pretend he has one son, no boyfriend, and a wife who is going to die 5.4 years after he does.

He does acknowledge, right before he drifts off, that the only way he'd be completely happy with such a life was if he'd never met Hancock.

Mary wakes him when she crawls into bed in the middle of the night. Ray reaches for her and they make love slowly, languorously. When Ray presses his face into Mary's hair, it smells like smoke.

Afterwards, they tell each other about their weeks. Ray gives Mary Hancock's note, and it makes her smile. When his eyelids are getting heavy again he finds himself telling Mary, "That was nice, just the two of us".

"It was nice," Mary says after a moment, smoothing back his hair and kissing him behind the ear.

::

"What the fuck is this?" says Hancock, staring at the piece of paper in his hand.

Ray busies himself picking at a knot in his shoelace and doesn't answer. Hancock strides over and shoves the paper in Ray's face.

"Well, Hancock, it looks like a list of names," Ray says.

"Uh huh," says Hancock. "And places. And dates."

Ray says nothing.

"Any idea why she would do this?"

I'm guessing Mary is, I don't know, trying to give you a part of your past back."

"You the big PR man, Ray. That what this is? 'Cos I see it as a big 'Fuck you, Hancock. I got Ray, I got my nice life, I don't—'" He stops, grabs a pen from the breast pocket of Ray's shirt and scribbles something on the paper. He uses the hotel wall as a writing surface, and also to fold the paper along crisp lines. He turns and whips the paper airplane he's created at the opposite wall where, Hancock being Hancock, it gets embedded in the television.

Ray re-ties his shoe, grabs his coat and heads for the door.

"Where're you going?" says Hancock, and he doesn't sound quite so sure of himself.

"I don't have time for this," Ray says. "Call me when you've calmed the fuck down."

"Ray," says Hancock.

Ray takes his hand off the doorknob and turns around. "What?"

"We don't get to see each other all the time," Hancock says. He's looking out the window.

"I don't know, Hancock, you're all over YouTube stopping that runaway subway car with your pinkie. Very impressive. And fully clothed, too—it's a good look on you."

"Yeah, well, I saw you, too. On TV. Schmoozing at some dinner thing in Washington. Saw Mary, too," he adds. "You looked real happy together."

Ray pushes his hand through his hair and leans against the door. "We are happy. I'm happy with this, too," he says, motioning between himself and Hancock. "And you and Mary - I don't know if I'm your marriage counselor, or—or your pimp," he finishes.

Hancock's sitting on the edge of the bed now, looking at his hands, but he looks up at Ray's last word. "That don't make me your whore, Ray. 'Cos I was already planning on fucking you ever since you came through that door wearing them tight-ass pants."

"I'm not letting you call me 'Mary'," Ray says.

"Yeah, and I'm not getting this off you, either," Hancock says, unbuttoning Ray's shirt with quick, rough fingers.

Later, when Ray's on his knees at the end of the bed, and Hancock's behind him, buried in him, his hands tight on Ray's hips, Hancock groaning their wife's name in his ear is what pushes Ray over the edge, what puts come all over Ray's hand.

It doesn't solve anything, but it feels good.

::

Mary knocks on the doorframe of the spare bedroom they've turned into Ray's home office. "You ready for a break?" she says.

"Sure," says Ray, flicking off his computer screen. He swivels in his chair to face his wife, who's pulled up the wingback chair from the corner. She motions to the tray holding two mugs of herbal tea she's put on a pile of papers on top of Ray's filing cabinet. They sip their tea and talk about Ray's latest client, a huge multi-national corporation that's just signed on board with All Heart.

"Oh, by the way, Hancock's going to come to Aaron's next game, if that's all right with you," Ray says after the shop talk dwindles.

Mary nods. "I'll make other plans," she says. She traces the patterns on her mug with her fingertip. "How is he?" she makes herself ask. It's hard, Ray getting to see him when she doesn't.

Ray says nothing for a moment, then he puts his mug down and rummages through the recycling bin under his desk. He passes her a piece of paper that looks like it's been creased and then clumsily smoothed out again. Mary doesn't get it at first, but she can feel herself flush when she sees Mary Embrey scrawled at the bottom of the flip side of the paper, next to John Hancock.

She must have put out her hand without thinking, because Ray's put a pen in it, and she's writing names in a column next to all of Hancock's names, starting from the present and working her way back. She gets in such a groove she doesn't even falter on the really bad times, she just keeps on writing with a steady hand. She remembers good things, too; little things like tearing into a loaf of sweet-smelling, oven-warm bread and passing half to Hancock, and big things like taking him by the hand when they get off the boat in America. She remembers Hancock smiling at her, a real smile. She hopes Ray makes Hancock smile for real; the grimaces he tries to pass off as grins for the cameras make her wince.

She's pretty sure she's left out some of the 1500s; there's parts of the Italian Renaissance she knows she wasn't sober enough to remember. Ditto the fall of Rome, but for completely different reasons. When she gets so far back she can't remember anything, she starts making up names.

When she finishes, her hand aches from gripping the pen too tightly. She reaches for her mug to find her tea is cold. She looks at Ray, who's looking at her with concern on his face. It makes her think of something else.

She flexes the fingers on her writing hand and picks up the pen again. She turns the paper over and squeezes Ray Embrey in between John Hancock and Mary Embrey. She holds it up to show Ray. She watches his Adam's Apple move as he swallows, then nods.

"Really?" she says in wonderment.

Ray snorts. "Yeah. The whole soul mates-throughout-eternity factor? Not at all threatening," he says.

Mary writes Elmer Fudd on the next line up. It just fits between Walter Russo and Phyllis Gleason. She shows it to Ray, who laughs.

"Bugs Bunny," he says. "Jimmy Stewart. JFK."

They fill in the rest of the paper together using the most ridiculous names they can come up with. Mary feels somber by the end, looking at all that history. Ray is quiet now, too. "It's just a piece of paper," Mary says, rubbing at an ink stain on her finger.

"That was just a heart on a piece of paper," Ray says, pointing to the All Heart logo that hangs on the wall over his desk.

"True," says Mary.

She rests her head against the back of her chair and tries to think about the future, not the past; failing that, about this one moment, where it almost seems as if everything might work.

END


End file.
